Let's talk about movies to end the year, like Antonio Pietrangeli’s 1965 "lost classic" I Knew Her Well

 

My last non-football posts of the past two years concerned films about characters who existed outside the "norm"; in 2021 it was Harold and Maude, about a young man who sees life as pointless until he has an "affair" with an octogenarian woman  who shows him that life is too short not to live it, and in 2022 it was Nothing Personal, which could be interpreted as an examination of how ultimately incompatible is the relationship between someone who simply wants to escape the world after some personal  tragedy,  and someone who is a loner by nature.

This time around I’m going to look at a film more grounded in the "norm," about how despite the desire to be “somebody,” most people have to face the fact that they are to most people “nobodies.”

But before I come to the film in question we might as well mention Aquaman 2, which we learn that despite Warner Brothers efforts to conceal the fact, word got around after the Thursday previews that there was more Amber Heard than most people were willing to stomach. According to a reviewer in Business Insider, it felt as if the amount of Heard’s screen time was “contractual,” meaning the filmmakers couldn’t cut any more of her out of the picture. 

If Heard’s part appears to be “underwritten,” her typically underwhelming performance merely means that not being a very good actor (i.e. lacks “chemistry”) and lack of natural star charisma means she is unable to make something out of what is given her. In any case, it appears that at least for its first weekend box office, Aquaman 2 won’t do better for the DC “universe” than what The Marvels did for the MCU half.

Of course if you want to put some "joy" into your holiday movie-viewing there is the "musical" version of The Color Purple, told in a time of Jim Crow and when black men were regularly being lynched. But no one need be concerned about this being a "CRT" film; rather it is an absorbed-with-self feminist story where we are supposed to believe all the ugly racist stereotypes about black men while black women are portrayed as "victims" and essentially lead blameless lives in a story authored by a black woman who admits she hates black men so much she concocted a tale of sexual abuse so beyond grotesque that some viewers forget it is fictional. Negative or "positive," stereotypes are still stereotypes.

Moving on, I suppose I was a little surprised to see this showing up on the Google news feed on my cell phone a couple months ago…

 

…but some algorithm must have sensed that The Young Girls of Rochefort—starring real-life sisters Francoise Dorleac and Catherine Deneuve, with guest appearances by Gene Kelly and Oscar-winner George Chakiris—is my favorite film musical, a fact I only discovered when I watched it for the first time six months ago after purchasing Criterion’s Jacques Demy collection.  La La Land (which was denied that Best Picture Oscar in favor of another “woke” film hardly anyone saw) was supposed to be influenced by Demy’s films, and I'm always looking to improve my video collection.

While I wouldn't put it in the same class, La La Land certainly has the “look” of Rochefort, but the “feel” of Demy’s best known film, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which has the bittersweet taste of lost opportunities, at least on the romance side. BFI noted that Demy’s films keeps things grounded in everyday reality:

Yes, his characters are looking for love, but they are doing so in a world where financial problems, unexpected pregnancies, unemployment, strikes, loneliness, boredom, jealousy, illness, crime, war and death exist.

I prefer Rochefort because it follows more closely the typical Hollywood pattern, where the “idealized lover” who may only exist in a person’s fantasies actually does arrive at the last moment after all hope has seemingly been lost: Solange (Dorleac) discovers that it is Andy (Kelly), who not only found the sheet music she lost, but was the “foreigner” she encountered by accident on the street and was smitten with at first sight (as he was of her), but thought was never to see again; but of course by the most fortunate of coincidences they were to meet again at the last moment before they both were to leave town. 

The great Michel Legrand music is what makes this scene work as well as it does (I hope your internet connection is better than mine):

 

It's a shame that Dorleac died in a horrible car wreck at the age of 25, because I preferred her impish personality to that of her sister's often icy screen demeanor; it is too bad more wasn't made of Dorleac's natural ability in comic roles, as seen here with the always watchable Jean-Paul Belmondo in That Man From Rio:

 

I admit that despite being somewhat of a videophile, just as a I dislike contemporary popular music, I find most contemporary films are too self-serving and don’t have much truth to say about either society or the world in general, and lack a willingness to experiment and challenge the audience, something that was a hallmark of Seventies’ cinema. As writer/director Paul Schrader recently said, the audience has changed, and what it thinks of as “art” today is not the same as what was thought of as art years ago, when filmmakers experimented with sight, sound and narrative to shock, disturb and reveal the sordid nature of reality, while today it is CGI effects and dishonest and alienating personal political agendas.

I did purchase the Blu-ray of Oppenheimer and thought it was a very good film; but otherwise the self-congratulatory nature of current product was particularly amusing to me when Screen Rant took pains to remind us that one of the “records” the perfectly forgettable box office bomb The Marvels set was the highest box office film by a black female director. Yeah, you throw $200 million at a purple-skinned Martian who happens to be visiting to make a CGI-heavy superhero movie and I’m sure people will remind you that if the film makes just $10 at the box office it will still be a “record” for a purple-skinned Martian.

Today we have seen an overload of “superheroes” films that takes us outside the “real world,” but the original “superheroes” movie didn’t have to leave the realm of “real life”: Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, and neither did its American remake, The Magnificent Seven. Today the earthbound “superheroes”—say like the Expendables—are hard to distinguish from the thugs they are fighting, and they give little or no thought to the local people most at harms way.

Anyways, the Criterion Collection resurrected a “lost classic” from 1965 by an under-appreciated Italian director, Antonio Pietrangeli’s I Knew Her Well, which I mentioned I was considering doing a post on and will do so now. The title is meant to be ironic, since the main character, Adriana Astarelli (embodied perfectly by Stefania Sandrelli), is someone as one perceptive character observes is "mercurial and capricious, always needing brief new encounters with anyone at all--just never with herself,"  and the audience isn’t allowed to know her very well either, only to guess what she is thinking, other than that she wants to be a "somebody."

This film actually has a great deal to say about society and human existence despite on the surface seemingly saying very little. It has an ending that seems to come completely out of left field, but if one takes the time to consider what had transpired during the film’s runtime, it is possible to understand the psychological state of Adriana that drove her to that action.

Without wasting any more time, let’s take a look at this lost classic of Italian new-wave cinema. One will note that it is episodic and follow no clear narrative or plot line; we just see Adriana moving on from one experience to the next. We never learn the circumstance that leads her to one place or another, simply going with the flow wherever the river takes her. She appears to want to becomes a film star and trusting anyone who promises to help her achieve this goal, while her personal life is equally without direction or common sense.

The film opens on a litter-strewn beach clearly out of tourist season...

 

 

...where we find Adriana with blonde-dyed hair giving herself a tan:

 

 

She has a transistor radio nearby, from which we hear popular Italian songs of the time; the music is important to the film, since it speaks to emotions often at odds to what we actually see being played out on screen, or provides us with clues to the future. A news update reminds Adriana of the time, and she rushes to a hair salon where she works; she stops briefly to request an old man to reattach her top:

 

 

He advises her to "make haste slowly." As we shall see, Adriana never takes such advice to heart; it is leap first and then look. At the salon she is serving a customer when she accidentally knocks over a bottle...

 

 

...which reminds her of another bottle she dropped while being manhandled by a deliveryman:

 

Adriana gazes at the camera--and us--while remembering this. Obviously Pietrangeli wants us take away some meaning from this; perhaps the broken bottle is a metaphor for the way something always gets broken in her life. Next we see her reading from a comic book, with an anti-hero character with demonic and paranormal qualities, in other words a fantasy world which Adriana spends much of her waking life in:

 

 

 

The owner of the salon arrives after the business has closed; we realize that Adriana has been waiting for him in order to provide a "service," meaning the one she agreed to for being hired for the job; for Adriana there is nothing particularly bad about this arrangement; she only wishes he would be more "gentle" with her:

 

 

The salon owner doesn't care about her dreams (he flicks the magazine away) and is only interested in what she can provide in the here and now, that is what is real. But this being her first job, she is willing; but her moods and moral code is subject to change, and she tends to sleep with the wrong people. 

 

This film being a series of "episodes" with no narrative link to them, this first scene sets the tone for what is to follow. Adriana is a dreamer but she is not in control of her dreams. Many people have dreams, but there is a better chance of it coming true if they have talent that sets them apart from other wannabes; Adriana's most apparent talent and selling point is her looks, and that is a dime-a-dozen. 

Music is important to the film, and in the salon we see Adriana turning on a radio where we hear a love song by the then popular Italian singer Mina, the "feeling" of which is certainly lacking in the present intercourse, and the music will be typical of the difference between how one wants the world to be, and how it is in reality in this film.

Next we see the then famous Italian actor Vittorio Gassman...

 

...except that he is being watched by Adriana and her fellow usher in a movie theater; they express their admiration not for his acting talent but for his physical presence ("I like tall men," says Adriana). She mentions she knew of a boy like him and how she had a "crush" on him. Her partner sighs and observes this is a "weekly thing" with her, another movie, and another "boy" she used to know. 

The camera pans down the women, and we see Adriana scratching her leg; probably old  nylons itchy. Pietrangeli would not be making a point of showing us this unless this is a reference point for something that happens later:

 

Again, we see another suggestion of the incongruity of expectations and reality. An old man tells Adriana he wants a seat in the back of the theater, but instead behind her back he takes a seat near the front:

 

  

There seems no reason for this rudeness, save to communicate the lack of seriousness that people take Adriana and the way she seems to accept being treated this way.  After work she hitches a ride with her current boyfriend and his friend Dario and his current girlfriend (a "foreigner"); apparently Adriana's boyfriend doesn't own a car but is an employee of an armchair business from which with or without permission "borrows" a car used to advertise it.

On the way, Adriana says Italian men...

 

...are "knuckleheads," since they don't have enough sense not to muse about the physical attributes of former girlfriends in front of the women they are now with. Not getting the attention she wants from her boyfriend, Adriana seeks attention by sitting in the advertising prop on top of the car:

 

 

 

We then encounter them at a deserted "lovers' lane" spot dancing to the radio in the car headlights; perhaps they have no money to go to a club. We hear Mina singing another song, again implying that these couplings are transitory; she tells us that she is still in love with the man she is addressing, but it is all over between them, and she is going back to a previous lover.

Adriana tells the other woman she is "lucky" to be in Italy, to which her boyfriend responds "aren't we"? It is different, she says, because she is a foreigner. For her, this is a new, different experience, and for Adriana this is all old and she is seeking a change in her life.

We also learn that Adriana is overly sensitive, and her companions find amusement in playing practical jokes on her; here she is tricked into lighting an exploding cigarette...

 

...which she finds none too amusing herself. She is not a "city" girl but a provincial, she doesn't understand this behavior, and while hurt by it at the moment, the fact that this kind of humiliation is a common thread of her experience suggests that while such experiences are common, she hasn't reached the point where her life has been a "joke."

This episode ends on a tragic note. On their way home the group encounters the scene of a fatal accident; a truck driver hauling horses swerved to miss a bicyclist and still managed to strike and kill a pedestrian:

 

 

What is it that we can read from Adriana's expression? She doesn't appear to be overly shocked or emotional by death, saying nothing. We will see this same expression later in the film, with the same emotional detachment in the face of death:

 

 

We don't know what happens to these people after this, and Adriana's boyfriend is never seen again. We are simply transported to the next "episode." Here we find ourselves in what looks like a slum tenement...

...which happens to be where Adriana's new publicist/agent (Cianfanna) has an "office." Here we see them stuck in an elevator, and when they ask the little boy to get help, he just points what may or may not be a real gun at them:

 

Once they find their way to the agent's "office," we see the walls covered with "publicity" photos of random young women, and the "secretary," and old man banging away on equally old typewriter whose keys tend to get stuck to each other:

 

He is typing in Adriana's "resume," all of it made up. When she is told that she speaks English, French and Spanish, she jokingly says that she speaks German too, and seems surprised when he tells the typist to put that in there too:

 

 

Adriana looks at some photos that the agent has taken of his clients; she notices one that she believes wouldn't be published...

 

...but Cianfanna tells her that isn't the point of the picture; if she puts her phone number on the back of it, she may  get a phone call from an "interested" producer. We then get the suspicion that these guys are not exactly at the top of their profession, as they insist she has to pay for a photo of herself in a magazine; they look more like they are starving for a quick buck to swindle out of a naive newcomer:

 

 

We also discover that this isn't a real "office," as we see the old man after the arrival of his wife shooing Adriana and her agent out of their apartment. 

Next we see Adriana dancing with--wait, haven't we seen this guy before, the one who told the "foreign" woman he was sure they were going to be "lovers" for longer than one night?

 

There must be a reason for Dario to show some interest in Adriana. Here he is trying to feel her up in a cafe, but she is self-conscious about doing it front of the waiter...

 

 

...but he assures her in the city people are used to such behavior in public; he exchanges places with the uncertain waiter to prove it:

 

 

We can sense that Adriana may not be able to survive in this world she has decided to enter. People know what it takes to get what you want, but being a provincial type. Adriana still doesn't understand that being a "good girl" and protecting her "virtue" will not make people "respect" her,  but in fact this brings about the opposite opinion, particularly when it is interpreted as being "lazy" and "difficult." 

After skinny-dipping in the ocean in the moonlight, being her idea but still nervous that someone might see her, they go to a hotel, where they watch a fat man's silhouette through the blinds where we see a young woman go down on him, more to Dario's amusement than Adriana's:

 

 

The next morning, perhaps not surprisingly, Dario is gone, leaving Adriana to foot the bill. She has no money, so she pawns the bracelet he gave her as a "gift":

 

We see that Adriana does on occasion get "acting" jobs, at least for commercials. We see her spend considerable time and expense preparing for one, doing up her hair and wearing an evening dress. When the director calls "action"...

 

 

...the curtain tells us that all of this was for nothing, they just wanted to see the boots, not her:

 

Adriana gazes pensively out a window in her apartment. We never see anyone who would be called a close "friend" who she would talk frankly with so that we would know what she is thinking about. We are simply not given the opportunity to "know her well":

 

...her pensivity is interrupted by a phone call, from someone she doesn't remember but apparently gave her phone number to while she worked at bowling alley. She agrees to meet him, but forgets to ask him what his name is:

 

 We don't know what became of this meeting, or if it had anything to do with her next modeling job. Here she is preparing for it...

 

...when she is interrupted by a neighbor who tells her the babysitter is late and asks her to watch the child until she shows up:

 

 

Adriana seems only too happy to do so even if it means she may be late for her job; it is an opportunity for meaningful human contact. Next we are at a boxing match, one fighter clearing there to be a punching bag:

 

 

Now we see why Adriana was wearing that balloon on her head, as she models a gown in between fights:

 

Her "agent" is there, annoying and drawing laughter from crowd taking photographs of her in an effort to make her appear to be a "star" they never seen or heard of:

 

 

Afterwards she learns that Cianfanna let the rest of the models go to a party leaving without her, apparently hoping that she will spend some time with him for doing all this "work" for her:

 

 

When she refuses (being a "good girl") he walks back to a car apparently owned by the old man, who is told by the agent can never "score" with any of his "girls."

On her way home Adriana encounters the "punching bag," Emilio, who she was rooting for to win the fight. She tells him that he landed a lot of good punches, but he says he only remembers the ones the other fighter landed. Why doesn't he fight a weaker opponent so he can win? Because that is what the other fighter was doing:

 

 

We see that Adriana only seems to have meaningful conversations with people with shared experiences, that is to say on the lower position of the social pole. Perhaps to return to her "roots," we next find Adriana back "home" on the family farm. Her father merely says "Hello" as he passes her:

 

It is not a "happy" reunion, since her mother seems bitter about the disappearance of Adriana's sister, who also grew tired of the farm life; it is implied that she became a nun.

We don't spend much time there, as the scene quickly changes to an acting class...

 

 

...where the acting coach seems to like Adriana more than some of her other pupils, although it can't be for the reason that she "emotes" her lines better. 

 

Next we see Adriana with someone we are not sure who she is, but she may be a madam for an "escort" service; she tells Adriana that she's helped lots of country girls like her who waste their "talents"--being young, pretty, have a nice figure and are unmarried. She shouldn't be wasting her time with men she thinks are  "wonderful":

 

 

Next we see Adriana in a police detective's office, who tells her they are looking for Dario, who stole that bracelet--and a watch, and a ring and some money from an older but still attractive woman. Adriana doesn't know where he is, she didn't even know his last name. She seems amused and is only surprised he didn't pay the hotel bill with the money he stole:

 

We wonder if Adriana actually took that job as an "escort," at least on a part time basis, since we next see her in the bedroom of an author and college professor:

 

He's writing a book with a character named Milena. He describes her such: 

 

She likes everything. She's always happy. She desires nothing, envies no one, is curious about nothing. You can't surprise her, she doesn't notice the humiliations, thought they happen to her every day. It all rolls off her back like some waterproof material. Zero ambition, no moral code. Not even  whore's love of money. Yesterday and tomorrow doesn't exist for her. Even living for today would mean too much planning. So she lives by the moment. Sunbathing, listening to music, and dancing are her sole activities. The rest of the time she is mercurial and capricious, always needing brief new encounters with anyone at all--just never with herself.

Adriana wonders if he is talking about her. She is probably right, but the professor only suggests she may be the "wisest of them all" if only because she is self-aware enough by now to recognize this has been the story of her life. 

Next we see her sitting almost alone by an athletic swimming pool, where there is a man who is contemplating. He says his name is Antonio and points out that it is the name of the patron saint of his hometown. This brings back memories of Adriana's confirmation ceremony...

 

 

...and from this we can presume that Adriana took religion seriously at one point in her life, thus perhaps explaining why it has taken so long to lose her country girl "virginity." Antonio takes her to a club, but his mind is on something else which he does not speak of, at least not at the moment:

 

Meanwhile, Adriana has another acting job, if only as an extra in a period film. In between shots she goes to a trailer to call Antonio to meet again. An assistant tells her "you have it bad":

 

 

He sees the score, but Adriana continues to show that the professor was right about her. Antonio takes Adriana into the sack, and the next morning after their love-making he asks her to do him a favor: to call his lover's home and ask for her, because her parents apparently dislike him and would hang up the phone if he called:

 

 

That's the last she sees of him. Back her apartment she encounters the garage attendant, Italo (Franco Nero in an early screen appearance), who Adriana treats as an "inferior":

 

 

Next she is at some fashionable party...

 

 

 ...where the appearance of a "big star" named Roberto is expected, but he is late. He finally shows up, and Adriana smiles at him, probably not the right thing to do because it puts something in his mind to do with her later:

 

 

The conceited Roberto encounters an aging former film star who he was once his protege named Gigi, who he only gives the time of day to by inquiring what he knows about Adriana:

 

 

The host of the party scolds Adriana for not doing what is necessary to get herself "noticed"...

 

 

...although she has probably seen what was expected of Gigi, once a star but now a has-been. Just for "fun" Roberto  has Gigi make a fool of himself dancing himself into exhaustion on a table to the amusement of the guests:

 

 

"Fame," apparently, is fleeting. But will things be different for Adriana? She apparently has a "date" with a director looking for a new "star." Here she is being given an opportunity for free publicity...

 

 

...during which the director ask the cameraman to pan down her legs. He then asks her to "act," which she does by putting her arms up:

 

 

Meanwhile, Roberto has asked Gigi to go to Adriana and tell her he wants her to go to his home with him for "drinks":

 

 

She tells Gigi she will only do so if Roberto asks her himself. Gigi agrees she is right, but tells Roberto she has another "commitment." Gigi was hoping that his old protege would help him find work, but is told he has screwed-up and Roberto won't have anything more to do with him:

Adriana returns to her apartment, where Italo has stayed up until she arrived. He has the cigarettes she wanted, and she notices that he has a cat:

 

 

At least he has company. While  she strokes the cat Italo puts his hand on her's, and she recoils. Italo admits that he sits there thinking about her all the time...

 

 

Italo says he knows that a woman like Adriana wouldn't give a guy like him a second look, but she is flattered by his sincere interest, quite unlike the other men she has known. After parking a car, Italo notices someone in the shadows in a back room. It is Adriana, and we suspect that she might want him too just now:

 

 

Back to her job as an theater usher, she watches newsreels with her co-workers. It is announced that there will be a "new face" on the last reel. It is the film made of Adriana at the party. The film has been "edited" to make her look like a joke. She is seen waving her arms repeatedly answering "I don't know" to several questions, and the camera that panned down her leg reveals a hole in her stockings...

 

...which prompts laughter from the crowd, and the shame this has caused in palpable on Adriana's face:

 

 

When the theater lights turn back on, we see Adriana's co-workers laughing at her expense, but she is gone:

 

 

She has been humiliated yet again, but she won't fight for herself, let alone depend on her "agent" to look after her interests. How much more can she take? Soon she is back to doing the glamour routine, but this time she allows the eye makeup to smear her face from the tears we hadn't seen her shed despite all:

 

An errand boy of about 10  arrives to make a delivery. Adriana wants to know if he knows how to dance; he doesn't so she shows him how. At first it seems "normal" but then Adriana forgets that he is just a boy and becomes a bit too "tight" with him...

 

 

...making him a little embarrassed about her intentions and he quickly leaves. 

Adriana puts on a blonde wig and goes to another party, where she encounters Dario again, who when asked about his troubles with the law claims that everything has been "cleared-up." They dance together, but he apparently is there with another  woman; Adriana points out the woman who looks like a hooker, and Dario gives a quick look that way...

 

 

...and claims not to know the woman, but we know better, and he is soon gone. Adriana finds a new dance partner, a black man (uncredited in the cast list), probably an American musician performing in the country:

 

 

And for once Adriana has a rapt audience, albeit of two people:

 

 

Her new partner is different than the other men she has gone out with. He actually wants to show her a good time for its own  sake. After dancing he takes her on a drive bouncing down a public staircase...

 

 

...a kind of roller coaster on the water ride...

 

 

...then a stop at the pizza parlor...

 

 

...and finally watching the birds in an aviary awaken at dawn:

 

 

Adriana seems to have had more fun from this chance encounter that she has had on all the other "dates" she's been on combined, but because of the communication gap (he can't speak Italian, she can't speak English), this is also a "relationship" that cannot be anything but a one-night stand short of having an interpreter tag along. But one thing it has done is to expose the lack of relationships that made her feel special and not an object of amusement. It could also be said that Adriana might have been happier if she had simply sought a compatible partner in life.

Adriana is now driving home in her own car after her long night out...

 

 

...and perhaps she has been thinking about her life because there is no trace of the pleasure she had just a short while before. She ignores Italo without a word...

 

 

...kicks her record player one more time to make it work, takes off her blonde wig...

 

...gazes out the window, this time without wistful anticipation, but a realization that her dreams of being famous could only come at too high a cost for someone of middling talent such as herself:

 

 

We have seen this expression earlier in the film, but what comes next is still unexpected. The camera pans toward the balcony as if it is following Adriana's movements and then we see a rush toward the street...

 

...and then back to the apartment; we don't see Adriana, and it is clear what she has done:

 

 

The ending of this film might seem “shocking” and “unexpected,” but like that in Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim and The Woman Next Door where a woman commits murder/suicide for “love,” there is a logic to it if we consider what has just transpired. Adriana has just had an encounter with a man unlike all the rest of the people she has known, besides his skin color. Her previous “lover” who she reunited with immediately abandoned her was like all the rest, because those “relationship” were only meant to be transient by the men, and there was no real interest in "knowing" her. 

The unnamed black man wasn’t there to use her, but she was “special” enough for him to show her a good time because it pleased him to see that it pleased her. This was the first time that Adriana truly appeared to be enjoying life for its own sake. But given the communication gap at the very least, it was also a one-time encounter, and couldn’t last. Worse, it exposed just how empty the seeking of "fame" was with those she could “communicate” with.

Adriana, although she wasn’t living in a fine house or villa, was living in a comfortable flat and even had enough money to afford her own car, so  she was doing something to earn a decent living, even if it depended on her youthful good looks.  But the fact that she was wearing a blonde wig showed that she still had to be something other than who she was; it was the “look” that was important, not the person.

Still, she seemed to be a person who was helpless without the “assistance” of others; she didn't have what it took to get to the next "level." That is not to say she didn't have opportunities to do a quid pro quo to get better jobs, but for some reason she chose to allow her "moral scruples" to intervene in dealing with those who were actually in a position to do something for her. Italo was perhaps the only person who cared if she was alive or dead; but then again, what use was he to her, at least in her mind.

But in a general commentary on society, Adriana—like  most people—had a need to be “special,” above the common run. Her visit to her low-class farmer parents suggested why she would have at least the “ambition” to be escape that life, but while she was an attractive young woman, she was a dime-a-dozen and apparently too naïve and not particularly talented enough to take the next step up without doing what was “necessary” for the times; Joan Crawford, for one, was not shy or self-conscious about admitting that for getting roles—especially in her early career—the “casting couch was better than the floor.”

However, it would be too easy to say that Adriana wasn’t willing to do the “work”; after all, she did get some "jobs," if only the kind where she wasn't what was being "sold." She made some bad choices, was inattentive to “detail,” and didn’t have an “agent” willing to look after her best interests.

But then again, the vast majority of us are just “nobodies” who are “superstars” in our own minds but not in that of others. Adriana's follies were the ones that most “normal” people have. Eventually most people accept their lot because life is short anyways and why waste the time you have left mulling over the what-could-have-beens. In the end, try as she may, Adriana, it seems, wanted more than this life could give her, and what there was, it wasn’t worth living for.

We have gone through a film where we don't know the  main character very well, because she doesn't tell us what she is thinking, and the people she is with don't seem to care anyways. She is a complete stranger to us, like ships passing in the night. Not knowing her thoughts makes us not understand why she killed herself; only in retrospect does it make "sense." 

And for those who still don’t want to believe the Seventies was the best decade for popular music (and film), here is a song by Hot Chocolate, “Emma,” that was a hit in 1975, that might at least give us an idea of what was going on inside Adriana’s mind:

We were together since we were five
She was so pretty
Emma was a star in everyone's eyes
And when she said she'd be a movie queen
Nobody laughed
A face like an angel
She could be anything

Emmaline
Emma, Emmaline
I'm gonna write your name high on that silver screen
Emmaline
Emma, Emmaline
I'm gonna make you the biggest star this world has ever seen

At seventeen we were wed
I'd work day and night
To earn our daily bread
And every day Emma would go out

Searching for that play
That never, ever came her way
You know sometimes she'd come home
So depressed

I'd hear her crying in the back room
Feel so distressed
And I'd remember back when she was five
To the words that used to make
Emmaline come alive

It was :
"Emmaline,
Emma, Emmaline,
I'm gonna write your name high on that silver screen.
Emmaline,
Emma, Emmaline
I'm gonna make you the biggest star this world has ever seen."

It was a cold and dark December night
When I opened up the bedroom door
To find her lying still and cold
Upon the bed
A love letter lying on the bedroom floor

It read :
"Darling I love you,
But I just can't keep on living on dreams no more.
I tried so very hard not to leave you alone.
I just can't keep on trying no more."